Old English Sports eBook

[Footnote 5: Shrove-tide and Shrove
Tuesday derive their names from the ancient practice
of confessing one’s sins on that day. To
be shriven, or shrove, means to obtain absolution
from one’s sin.]

[Footnote 6: It was practised as late as the
end of the last century.]

[Footnote 7: So called from the Gospel of the
day, which treats of the feeding of the five thousand.—­Cf.
Wheatley on Prayer-book.]

[Footnote 8: The caber is a small tree, or beam,
heavier at one end than the other. The performer
holds this perpendicularly, with the smaller end downwards,
and his object is to toss it so as to make it fall
on the other end.]

[Footnote 9: A Pleasant Grove of New Fancies,
1637.]

[Footnote 10: Sometimes the May Queen did not
consort with morris-dancers, but sat in solitary state
under a canopy of boughs.]

[Footnote 11: A Correspondence in Athenaeum,
Sept. 20, 1890.]

[Footnote 12: The same story is told of Willes,
who is supposed by some cricketers to be the inventor
of the modern style of delivery.]

[Footnote 13: The word fair is derived
from the ecclesiastical term, feria, a holiday.]

[Footnote 14: Cf. Govett’s King’s
Book of Sports, and Tom Brown’s Schooldays,
to which I am indebted for the above accurate description
of back-sword play.]

[Footnote 15: I am indebted for this description
to Mr. W. Andrews’ interesting book on the Curiosities
of the Church.]

[Footnote 18: The custom of bringing in the boar’s
head is still preserved at Queen’s College,
Oxford. The story is told of a student of the
college who was attacked by a wild boar while he was
diligently studying Aristotle during a walk near Shotover
Hill. His book was his only means of defence,
so he thrust the volume down the animal’s throat,
exclaiming, “It is Greek!” The boar found
Greek very difficult to digest, and died on the spot,
and the head was brought home in triumph by the student.
Ever since that date, for five hundred years, a boar’s
head has graced the college table at Christmas.]